Episode: 2632
Title: HPR2632: Liverpool Makefest 2018 - interviews with Robert and Carl
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2632/hpr2632.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:47:12

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This in HBR episode 2632 entitled Liverpool Make First 2018 Interviewee Robert and Carl
and in part of the series Interview.
It is hosted by Tony Hume, aka Tony H1212 and is about six minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summary is in this episode I talk to Robert from Robert's workshop and Carl from Edge Hill University.
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This is Tony Hume.
Robert, Robert Glass from Robert's workshop.
Robert, could you tell us a little bit about what Robert's workshop does?
Robert's workshop we go into primary schools and we teach stems through making.
So we've got maker kits like balloon cars, elastic band cars, electric powered cars and wind powered cars.
And we do science through the making.
So we teach Newton's Third Laws, we teach potential in kinetic energy.
And that's how we teach the kids and they remember it because they've made something that actually does it.
And the other thing that we're doing now is we're going into schools with the crumble microcontroller
and we're teaching kids out a program but using certain components to make up
we've developed a small robot that they can make up in about 20 minutes and then program
and see what they're doing on problem solve it really quickly because if it's turning left they told it to turn right
they can change what they've done immediately and see the reaction.
So we're getting a very good response.
So how did you get into doing this kind of thing?
I've been a design technology teacher ahead of design technology for 27 years
and because of the changes in the curriculum we've had to introduce lots of things
and because of stem the only way that we can stand out in stem against science and mass
is by showing them how to do it with all these making kits.
Right, so I'm just standing a little bit away from you still at the moment
but I can see some little robots with the crumbles attached to them and a couple of laptops.
So how did the kids actually make them work?
They make them work into a block programming system, it's similar to scratch
but it's been adapted for the crumble and they can just drag the blocks into a series
and then they just send it to the robot through a cable and it works immediately.
The robot's got its own on-board power so it works away from the computer
and they seem to really enjoy it.
That's really cool actually. You've got some other things that seem to be made out of bits of laser cut ply and things. What are they?
Yeah, well we've got our balloon car, we've got our electric car, we've got a elastic bank car
and they're all designed so they just clip together very easily
and the kids can make them decorate them and then they all work
and we've got a new thing called a retro robot which is run with levers and electric motor
and we're developing that for this year.
That's really cool. How would people find you on the internet?
We're at robotsworkshop.co.uk
Thank you very much. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you.
This is Tony Hughes at Liverpool McFest for High Compublet Radio and I've got with me.
I'm Carl Simmons, I'm from Edge Hill University. I work on initial teacher training programs
and we're here today at Liverpool McFest to get kids interested in robotics.
So we're going to get them to make some little doodle bots out of very cheap components
so poundland fans and a couple of batteries but then loads of other stuff to make it nice and artistic
and interesting. They're going to make these robots that are going to random works of art
and they're going to be able to take it all the way with them.
Works out here is a doodle bot.
So a doodle bot, it's a well, I guess there's no standard definition
but what we've got here is a bot that's made of three pens and ice cream top and a fan.
If you put those together in a certain way then you create a vibrating unit
that then will move across a piece of paper and because it's got legs for pens
the pens will draw on the piece of paper and make a kind of repeated pattern or a scribble or a doodle
and then kids can look at that and say what they can see in the doodle
and they can augment it with extra drawing or stickers or whatever they want
so they can take away a piece of art and a robot.
But then it kind of prompts questions like how would you control it
because of the moment it's completely random so they can begin to think about questions
around microcontrollers, other kinds of methods of locomotion like wheels or tracks.
So it gets them thinking really about robotics.
Right, what microcontroller are you actually using before the doodle bot?
Yep, so these don't use microcontrollers so they're completely random
they're just driven by vibrating motion.
But you could then, the idea is you could then take them and add either a code book
or a microbit or an Arduino
and then you could actually pull when the motor's coming on
so that would produce a different sort of pattern.
But we're not doing that here today because we want them to be able to take something away with them
and if we did microcontrollers it get too expensive to give them all.
So this is kind of an introduction to electronics and kind of robotics at a very simple level?
Exactly, yeah. So it's for younger kids just to get the idea that they can take some cheap components
and hack them together and make them do something they were never intended to do
and then begin to think about robots and how robots are used.
I see a very fancy little construction over there with a little balloon face on it.
Is that one of them?
Yeah, so that's our little dali bot.
So that was our first, that was the first little prototype we made
and we just thought which artist would like this particularly.
And we thought dali probably would, so we've tried to make it look a bit like dali
with a nice little mustache and a quirky eyebrow.
I shall take a picture and that shall be included in the show notes for the recording.
Great, thank you.
Thank you very much.
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